Rouen is not just the place Joan of Arc gruesomely met her end, it is also the site of one of the few remaining plague ossuaries.
Here in a quiet courtyard now filled with benches, birds, and airy lamps lies a medieval burial pit and ossuary. According to Wikipedia, the Black Death was present in France between 1347-1352. The bubonic plague pandemic reached France by ship from Italy to Marseille in November 1347 and spread south to north. The presence of the plague was documented in the Normanniae nova Cronica to have reached Rouen during the feast of John the Baptist on 24 June 1348. An unlucky day indeed.
In Normandy, plague victims were so common it was impossible to bury the corpses adequately. In Rouen, a courtyard was set aside, a great pit dug, and bodies tossed in with ingredients to aid quick decomposition.
After successive waves of the plague in the 15th and 16th centuries, the bones from the last pandemic were removed and stacked in a second-floor gallery to make way for more bodies. Formerly called the ossuary (a receptable for human remains), it is a rare reminder of the greatest series of pandemics ever recorded.
Though defaced by time and religious wars, on the stone columns supporting the first floor, a danse macabre is depicted. What is the dance of death? A living person stands next to a skeleton come to take their life. Both kings and priests and peasants were portrayed; death could await them all.
Above the columns, still very visible in the carved wood, were the tools of the gravedigger, shovels and picks, and the bones to be buried.
As the plague claimed fewer and fewer victims, the courtyard grounds were used for schools, and eventually the human remains were moved to another cemetery. Now it’s just a shady place to picnic, if you don’t mind the ghosts.
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